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The Second Mrs. Gioconda

The greatest artist of his time; an apprentice with a larcenous heart and an aversion to the truth; and a young duchess whose plain face belies her beautiful soul. Could the complex ways in which these three lives intertwine hold the key to a historical riddle as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa's smile — why Leonardo da Vinci devoted three years to a painting of the second wife of an unimportant merchant when all the nobles of Europe were begging for a portrait by his hand? Only a master storyteller like two-time Newbery Medal-winner E.L. Konigsburg could create such an intriguing answer to the puzzle behind the most famous painting of all time.